About

About

To not take up too much time, I’ll leave some valuables right up front.

The name of the blog refers to the amount of days until I turn thirty. But it is not some morbid countdown to an end, but rather, a push toward a new beginning.

No – not ‘strike off.’ Regress. You’re 30 years old, man. There are no ‘other angles.’ There is only forward – into it – or backward.

— Thomas Pynchon, “Gravity’s Rainbow”

I had so many ideas when I was twenty about how life should and could be – and while that dude was naive as hell, I’ll admit that he had some good points.

This is an experiment in free-hand, in openness, in sharing what I do. If I’m to regret one thing this last decade, it’s been stockpiling my thoughts and emotions in my own hard drive and making it visible to only me. Instead of trepidatiously sharing anything with some close friend, I’m sharing with the world.

I’ve been traveling and writing for years. To the Roots has taken on several incarnations and has followed me from Virginia to Kansas to Colorado to Oregon. I’ve tried to find one place to feel like my entire person and this, so far, is the closest I’ve come.

I’ve split this site – as of now – into four distinct places.

Here lie the mortal remains

of one who in life

searched without relief for

one by one

your face on every bus in the city.

— Leonel Rugama

608 is an amalgamation of the entire species. It’ll be updated as much as I care for it to be. It’s the place for any kind of discursive thought that crosses my mind. It’ll follow someone trying to be more aware of their place on this planet.

To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace.

— Galgacus

Empire is my attempt at grappling with all I’ve done for the last decade. I’ve written a lot about my travels across this continent but I’ve never had a prism to see them through. I’ll be updating it once a week with a new episode in what brought me here.

It’ll never be known how this has to be told, in the first person or in the second, using the third person plural or continually inventing modes that will serve for nothing. If one might say: I will see the moon rose, or: we hurt me at the back of my eyes, and especially: you the blond woman was the clouds that race before my your his our yours their faces. What the hell.

— Julio Cortazar, “Blow Up”

Rara Curiositas was the codename for the little poems, extended thoughts, and fiction that I was writing since I’d moved to Portland. My way of continuing this – only publicly, every Wednesday.

Nobody knows what is the matter with me, and I’m not about to go tell anybody

— Bob Dylan

Two Squiers and a Pearl (TS&AP) is a wildcard. It’s where I’ll talk about music as I continue writing a novel based around it. I’ll be looking at old records that have influenced me throughout these years.

I’ve worked hard throughout my life to be a ‘doer’ and not a ‘sayer.’ There’s been an itch I haven’t been able to scratch – and I’m hoping this is it. Not only do I want to revive memories – for no other reason than to try to feel whole and connected to everything that came before this night I’m writing this and you’re reading it – but I want to create new ones, in real time, with real people, for a real audience.

In short, I’ve lived a unique life. That’s all I’ve wanted for myself. It hasn’t been perfect. It hasn’t even been close. But it’s been mine. My thoughts and feelings, my demons and insecurities, my triumphs and failures. That’s what I want to explore. I want you to come along.

Daniel,
Now that I have found your blog, and see your location, I’ll suggest that you go over to Fort Leavenworth and visit our higher headquarters as a start, then come on down here for more thorough investigation. I’ll help coordinate a visit to the Combined Arms Center, if you like.
Also, I invite you to check out my new WHINSEC Facebook page. I just started it earlier this week, and filled in some info today. Just go to Facebook and enter WHINSEC or Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. We also have a blog, but we are a bit slow on updating that. Good luck, Lee Rials